Green wants fans to see City’s stars of the future
EXETER City coach Dan Green has urged the club’s supporters to lend their support to the club’s Under-23 team ahead of tonight’s clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The Grecians have done well in the competition ever since they first entered it with the matches a useful exercise for the development of young players and for one or two older players to gain match fitness.
With Exeter not in a reserve league, the games are as competitive as it gets for players not involved in first team action and City’s success in the competition is down to the fact that they do use it so wisely.
It has proved to be an ideal grounding for the likes of Matt Grimes, Ollie Watkins, Ethan Ampadu and Joel Randall, who all first came ti prominence when playing for City in the competition, before progressing to the first team.
Now, Green has urged supporters to come along and see what it’s all about, where they could see the next gem starting out on their footballing journey.
The Grecians qualified for the group stage by beating Plymouth Argyle 2-1 at Home Park and opened their group stage with a 1-1 draw at home to Swansea City last week. Green said: “Wolves will be different to Swansea in their own way but can play a similar style. One that we must be ready to adapt to.
“I would love the fans to come and watch these games. In six months, a year perhaps, the fans will get to say: ‘I remember that night, and then remember their first team debut.’
“That’s what creates the connections between the fans and our players are nights like this.”
Goalkeeper Harry Lee, who turns 16 in October, and 16-year-old striker Sonny Cox, both of whom are highly thought of at St James Park are expected to start, while the good news for first team manager Matt Taylor is that 22-year-old midfielder Archie Collins – another homegrown Academy graduate – is expected to get some minutes on his return from a knee injury.
Ben Seymour is expected to lead the line and has impressed in the competition so far, although Taylor says the striker – now 22 – should be performing well.
“This is with no disrespect to ben or the competition, but we expect Ben to play well at that level now,” Taylor said. “He should be above the level in terms of his physicality, but also in terms of his game as well.
“The biggest marker is when Ben gets on the pitch within our first team and he will openly admit that it hasn’t been straightforward this season in the games he has started, or the games where he has come on and tried to affect it as a substitute.
“He is still very much part of our first team plans, but he got more minutes last Tuesday (against Swansea) to keep him fresh and to keep him ready. He would like to have got a goal to go alongside his performance – like all centre forwards do, and he got two down at Plymouth – but we want him to reproduce those performances that he does at Under23 level for the first team. That has to be his aim.”
Seymour has scored only three goals for Exeter in 68 first team appearances now with two of those coming in 11 EFL Trophy games. It goes to show how hard the step up to first team level is from the Under-23s but if he needs an example of it being done, then he should look no further than captain Matt Jay.
Now 25, Jay also struggled to make the step up scoring twice in his first 50 outings for the Grecians. But since a goal at Crewe Alexandra on February 23, 2019, he has gone on to notch 37 in 89 appearances.
“MJ was my captain in the Under23s when he was the same age and in a similar position to Ben really,” Taylor said.
“MJ is an example, but I think we have loads of examples in terms of players that have played in that competition over the years and are now in our first team, or gone on to bigger and better things. But the biggest marker will always be on a Saturday afternoon in League Two.”